Chapter 1: ERROR 404

Carson told me he knew where I could find my brother. Next thing I know, I'm lying in ditch with his excadrill's claws at my throat. I'm already beat up pretty bad. What feel like knives cutting into my back are the rocks I landed on when I flew off my motor bike, and my knee feels twisted. Prisca is unconscious next to me—my vulpix. The grass in front of her mouth moves, and I can't tell whether she's still breathing or it's the rain bending the blades. Carson whistles a tune as he looks the two of us over, then puts his hand on the excadrill's shoulder. "They tell me these things can tunnel through steel," he says. "Never seen it myself. Not sure I believe it. What do you think?"

I think, It doesn't matter. I'm not made of steel.

I think, He's going to kill me.

Whether it's fear or shock, I don't have anything to say. Carson doesn't seem to mind. He's whistling again—what sounds like an out of tune cross between a lullaby and a nursery rhyme—and the song curdles my insides more than the monster with his blades pushing into my neck does. "I'm going to level with you. This is going to suck." He kneels down and rests his hand on my knee. "I'm sorry, and I'm sorry about your brother, too. I mean that. He's a good kid."

Carson pulls out a cigarette. When he flicks his lighter, the excadrill's drill starts spinning. Slow at first, then faster than I can follow. I figure it must be the shock after all, but I'm not thinking about how I'm going to die. Somehow, even as I feel the drill start pushing into my neck, the only thing I can think about is how this is all my brother's fault, and how much I hate myself for blaming him for it.

Jump back to a month ago. I'm sitting in the alley behind Striaton City's Poké Mart. My break isn't supposed to start for another twenty minutes, but the customers inside are too much for me to handle.

My last straw was the kid with the Hyper Potion. Maybe eleven years old. He walked up to the register with what looked like the last of his savings and asked me if it would fix his lillipup. I told him, Yeah, it'd make the little guy better than new. Told him, When I was off on my pokémon adventure, I always carried a few with me, just in case.

What I didn't tell him was that before I worked at the Poké Mart, I'd never so much as touched one.

The kid liked what I said so much that he went back to the shelf and picked up another, and when he didn't have enough money for both, I rang him up at a discount. With the markup we put on those things, we still made money hand over fist. Selling those potions is about the closest thing I've ever done to robbery, and watching the smile on the boy's face as I handed him his bag was the closest I've been to crying in the past half a day. "I need to quit," I say.

Ellie is leaning against the alley wall with her arms crossed. She's worked the register with me for the past five years. We make a good team. She's a hard worker. Pretty. Has a stronger stomach for screwing over customers. She nods, but she isn't smiling. Her lips are pressed together so tight that the skin around them is turning pale, and she points to the cigarette I'm holding between my fingers. "I thought you already did."

I shake my head. "My job. This job. I can't do this anymore."

"You're just stressed." She pushes herself off of the alley wall with her fingertips, and with strides that look too short for her long legs, steps closer. "You could take some time off, Remmy. Nobody would blame you."

"What else am I going to do?"

Ellie sits on the curb next to me and starts leaning closer, but backs away and crinkles her nose when my cigarette smoke makes a beeline for her face. She hates the habit almost as much as I do. "Try to relax a bit, I guess. Get your mind off things."

I don't bother trying to explain. Even if I told her, Ellie would never understand. She's an only child, and her parents work in the city. There's never been a day in her life where she didn't know exactly where she could find the people she loved.

So I don't tell her that when family goes missing, it's the downtime that kills you.

"I'll think about it," I tell her, but I won't. It's been a month since anybody has heard from my brother Kale. What Ellie can't wrap her mind around is that when somebody is gone, you can always find them at home. You can't escape it. His pictures. His toys. Clothes. You can't look at them without remembering how he isn't there. His empty seat at the dinner table gives him more presence than if he'd been sitting there himself.

I can't even be near my house without thinking about him.

Ellie braves the cigarette smoke and slides closer, throwing her arm around me, but with her other hand she's buffing her fingernails against the strap of her knockoff designer handbag. "Do that," she says, only glancing away to check her cuticles when she thinks I won't notice, "I think it'll do you a lot of good."

Neither of us are feeling it, but we hug anyway. Out of habit, mostly. Because it feels like we'd be committing one of The Seven Deadly Social Sins if we don't. Don't ask me which one. I couldn't tell you.

I don't think either of us could care less.

What I told you earlier about never being able to escape the fact that somebody you love is missing, that's only mostly right. Truth is you get one free moment every day where you can sit back and think to yourself, It's all good.

Most days it's when you first wake up. You're still half asleep and trying to figure out what's all part of your dream and what's really happening. Maybe you were dreaming about him. You throw on a shirt and yesterday's pants because, Hell, they're still clean enough, and when you walk out into the hallway, you stumble over a pile of his folded up clothes, still pristine from out of the dryer. Some days, that's when you realize. Others, you work up a mind to wake him up and tell him to pick his shit up off the ground before it hits you. Every once in a while, you start knocking on his bedroom door before you finally get that he's not going to answer.

See, it's not like you're retarded or anything. The whole time, you know he isn't actually around. It's just that something in your brain won't let you add two and two to get four. It's like turning the ignition in your car and seeing the check engine light. It tells you something is way seriously wrong, but the engine sounds alright, and it feels like it's doing fine when you push down on the gas pedal, so you figure that whatever it is can't be that terribly important. It isn't until you're cruising down Highway Route 4 and your wheel falls off in the middle of the road that you realize how messed up everything is.

It's like typing in the wrong web address into the navigation bar when you're surfing the internet.

ERROR 404: FEELINGS NOT FOUND.

Today's moment comes when I get home from work. After Kale left on his adventure—and even before he disappeared—Mom would set a plate for him at the dinner table every night. She'd even put food on it. Not a lot. Just enough so that she could say she was still taking care of him. She told me that when I was a mother I'd do the same, because the moment a mother stops cooking for her kids is the moment she loses them.

I walk through the door late enough that the food's already set out. She grabs my arm before I can put my stuff down, and pulls me to my chair. Says the food will get cold if I don't start eating now. Dad's waiting in his seat, but his plate is already nothing but crumbs. So is Mom's. I'm not hungry, but the way they look at me sitting there, like a trainer feeding his starter for the first time, I can't walk away.

The food's been cold for at least an hour.

Mom's talking about whatever soap opera she was watching earlier like anybody cares. Dad watches her, but I can see him glance from Kale's plate to his cluster of empty beers between every few words. From where I'm sitting, I can see my brother's pile of folded laundry sitting outside his room. It's been sitting there for weeks, but nobody has the heart to clean it up. Putting it away would be like chiseling an epitaph on a gravestone. Nobody can get rid of it the same way Mom can't stop cooking. So it sits there.

And I know he's gone, but for just a moment, I expect him to open his door and start putting those shirts away. Sit down and eat a long cold dinner. Mom would stop talking bullshit, and Dad would stop drinking.

What I couldn't tell Ellie was that what's worse than never being able to forget that your brother is missing is knowing he is, but still hoping he isn't. Imagining that maybe it was really just a big mistake and he's been hiding in his room the whole time. Something stupid and impossible like that. No matter how many meals Mom cooks for him, or how long his pile of laundry sits in the hallway, that hope sits in my stomach like an ulcer.

ERROR 404: YOUR BROTHER IS GONE.

When I'm done eating, I grab Kale's plate and head to my room. Prisca is sitting on my bed, and she whines when I set the plate on the floor. As far as pokémon go, vulpixes are smart. But Prisca isn't smart enough to understand what's happening—just that something is wrong. I have to shove the plate under her nose before she starts eating.

She looks almost as run down as I do. I haven't been sleeping, so neither has she. Prisca was my own starter—the first pokémon I was given when I went on my own adventure nine years ago. The two of us set off to become champions.

We ran home with our tails between our legs before we had four gym badges. Now she's a house pet. Tame, and fat. I'm twenty-two, working behind a cash register at the Poké Mart, and still living with my parents.

Some champions.

I pull off my work clothes and throw them to the floor. If Prisca got fat, I've lost weight. Not in the good way. The dark rings around my eyes that should be makeup are lack of sleep, and when I look in the mirror and expect my irises to be blue, I see spider webs of bloodshot surrounding a dull grey instead. My hair should be red, but it's dark with sweat and grease from working, and it falls matted down to my shoulders.

Prisca gulps down the last of the food and nuzzles my leg. She looks up, and maybe I'm just projecting myself onto her, but when she whines all I can hear is, I can't do this anymore.

Mom calls for me from the living room. I hear Dad open the refrigerator and the clanking of bottles. Prisca is still looking up at me, her pudgy face cocked and her tails drooping.

I say, "Me neither."

My alarm is set for three in the morning. I never actually fell asleep, so I turn it off at 2:50. After so long without sleep you start to look like Hell, but you don't feel it. Somewhere between one and three days without actually hitting the sack, you start to ride the waves. Maybe your body gets used to it. I think I'm just too tired to care.

My bag is already packed. A little red duffel that can't hold more than a few changes of clothes and a tooth brush. It's spur of the moment, and I'm not thinking too far ahead, but I can't stay at home. Not a day longer. Not without knowing where Kale is.

Prisca is huddled next to me, and she isn't sleeping either. When you're as close to somebody as we are to each other, you fall into the same rhythm. One half doesn't eat, neither does the other. I'm handling the deprivation better than she is, but she's a trooper. Being tired and fat doesn't make you any less loyal.

She crawls out of bed with me, and after throwing on some clean clothes, I grab her leash. The jingling of the latch throws her into a frenzy. It's late, and I don't want to wake my parents, so I grab her muzzle before hooking it to her collar. She gets the hint.

We don't stop at Kale's door when we're on our way out. My moment for the day has gone and past—I know there's no hope he's in there. I don't know where he is, but I'm going to find out. We walk through the hall and past the living room. My hand reaches for the front door. That's when I hear my dad's voice. "Remmy?"

He's drunk, and tired, and the word comes slow. I can see his silhouette in the dark, sitting on a recliner in the living room. "Dad? What are you doing up? It's almost three."

There's a bright flash when he turns on the light. I see nothing but white, but once my eyes adjust I see him looking at my bag. "You'll need money," he says.

I feel guilty. Not about money. I've got enough saved up from the Poké Mart to last. What I feel guilty about is leaving. Even if it's to find my brother. I could have been going off to save the world—my parents would still be missing two kids instead of one.

When I don't answer, Dad says, "Sit down for a minute. Have a beer."

I take a seat on the sofa across from him. He's got a mess of empty bottles on the coffee table, but from what seems like out of nowhere he hands me a new one. My Mom, she copes with things with cooking. Cleaning. Day time soap operas. Dad has beer.

The bottle is cold enough that beads of water form around its neck. It's only going to make me more tired, but I sip anyway. My coping mechanism is the Poké Mart. If I didn't have that, I'd probably be plastered every night with Dad. He probably knows it. "You remember when you brought Prisca home?" he asks.

Prisca perks up at the mention of her name and jumps up into Dad's lap.

I nod.

"That must have been what, nine years ago?" he asks.

"Nine," I say.

Dad's scratching her behind the ears, and even with the booze on his breath, she starts licking his nose. He laughs, but as he pushes her away it almost sounds like he's crying. "You came in here with that thing on a leash and we told you, 'Put her in the damn pokéball. She'll be happier inside.' But you just couldn't. Kept her on that leash all day. You remember what she did?"

I was thirteen when I picked Prisca as my starter. It was my first day as a pokémon trainer, and I'd never felt so important in my life. I haven't since. "She pooped on the floor."

"All over the living room," Dad said, waving to a spot on the carpet next to his chair. "Your mother had you on your hands and knees picking all that shit up. Nearly kicked Prisca out of the house. Would have made you put her in the ball, but—" He stops talking, and his drunken smile fades. He drinks. I drink, too.

What he was going to say was that Mom would have forced me to put Prisca in a pokéball, but by the time her mess was cleaned up, Kale was using her for a pillow. He was two. She didn't have the heart to take her away from him. My father didn't have the heart to repeat that part of the story. He and I are a lot alike.

When his beer is empty, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. "Take this," he says, handing me a thin wad of bills. It's not a lot of money. At least, not for most people. Enough for a few days, maybe. It's still a lot for my family. We aren't exactly below the poverty line, and calling us poor would be a bit of a stretch, but we aren't exactly rich.

"I've got cash, Dad. I don't need it."

He waves me off. "Take it. You're doing this for the both of us. Mom too."

Mom. My plan had been to walk out the door without anybody knowing. She wouldn't like the idea. Not because she didn't want to find my brother, but because she didn't want two kids gone. Eleven or twenty-two, a child is still a child. I didn't want to think about how much it would hurt her when I left. "What are you going to tell her?"

Dad shrugs. "I'll come up with something."

I nod, then sip, and then sip again. Before I know it, the bottle is empty. Dad sees me run dry and grabs another. "One more drink with your old man?"

He holds it out for me, and I want it. Not the beer, but an excuse to sit with him for another five minutes. Just to talk. I want to stay, but I shake my head. "I'm driving."

Dad looks disappointed, but smiles. "Here," he says, and hands me Prisca's leash instead of the bottle.

We all walk to the door, and all the way through the living room I see him looking at the spot on the floor Prisca soiled the first day I brought her home. It was also the first day I left. I realized tonight would be the second. Dad pushes the door open and looks outside. It's a clear night. Warm. The moon isn't up, but the starts are bright. "I love you, Remmy."

"I love you too, Dad."

We hug, but it's short, and as soon as he lets go I step out. I hear the door shut behind me as I walk down the driveway, Prisca in tow, and I know that if I look back I'll see Dad watching out the front window. I also know that if I see that, I'll never leave.

My motor bike is in the garage. I push it down to the end of the driveway and lift Prisca up into the basket. The keys are in the ignition, but I sit on the bike's seat and light a smoke before turning it. With everything ready to go, I have no idea what to actually do.

Kale's cell phone went dead a day after his last call three weeks ago. Last we spoke, he was training up to win his fourth badge. That would have put him near Nimbasa City. That'll be the first stop. Check the gym. Talk to people he might have battled. It'll be another week before the police start a missing trainer investigation, but I'll check the station, too.

Prisca sticks her nose up in her basket, and it's time to go. I pat her on the head before turning the motor bike on. We ease onto the road, and then I gun the engine. I don't give a damn about how many badges I didn't get. I don't care about The Pokémon League or the championships or whatever the Hell else I'd been excited about nine years ago. All I want is my brother.

And I will find him.